Posted
by
Roblimo
on Tuesday September 10, 2013 @02:46PM
from the newer-is-not-always-better dept.

Millions of Americans bought their first HDTVs between four and seven years ago, because that's when prices for 40" - 50" sets started dropping below $700. Those sets are obviously between four and seven years old now. Are new ones so much more wonderful that it's time to get a new HDTV? Not necessarily. Alfred Poor, long-time display technology expert and senior editor for aNewDomain, has some insight here, which he shares with us in today's video. There's obviously a lot more to discuss about TV technology advances (such as 3d) that we didn't get to today, so look forward to another discussion on this topic in two or three weeks.

Robin Miller:
This is Dr. Alfred Poor known to most Slashdot readers as Alfred, and he
is an expert on high-definition televisions and televisions in
general. Today we’ve rounded him up to talk about televisions
and high-definitions televisions. If you’re one of the many
people who bought a high-definition television when they first got
reasonably priced around five years ago, is it time to look at
another TV. Alfred is it? Should we look at new TVs or just stick
with what we have?

Alfred Poor: Well,
the first thing is getting a lot of attention these days is the new
higher definition sets that have come out.

Robin Miller: Right.

Alfred Poor: CES
wants us to call them UHD for Ultra High Definition, but everybody is
calling them 4K because that stands roughly for 4,000, which is
roughly how many vertical lines of resolution they’ve got. In
other words, they’re roughly 4,000 pixels across. And that
compares to roughly the 2,000 that you have in a standard 1080p
television that we have already.

So essentially, if you
have a 50-inch 4K display, it’s the same as taking four 25-inch
1080p displays and gluing them together to make a bigger one. So it’s
really just a question of having more pixels. There’s a bunch
of problems with this; the most important one of all is that there is
not all that much content available yet in 4K resolution. There’s
tons in standard HD, the 1080p HD resolution.

The movie theaters are
using 4K, a lot of stuff is being produced for the movies originally
in 4K, but not that much of it is available to consumers. Sony has
started by selling a little box that it has some movies in 4K
installed in it and you hook it up to the Internet and they’ll
be able to download or you’ll be able to buy and download more
movies in that resolution, but that’s a pretty narrow stream of
content.

The second big problem is
as the Sony box demonstrates, there’s not a big infrastructure
to deliver this. You can’t get 4K over any cable systems at
this point, there may be some experiments going on with satellite,
but again your standard channels are coming through in 1080 at best.
A lot of cable systems end up compressing the signals so badly that
you’re not even getting a good quality 1080 out of it, there’s
no way they’re going to be able to send four times that number
of pixels and get you a good image quality.

Robin Miller: Mine
is giving me a 720p actually, that’s what I get from my cable
provider.

Alfred Poor: But
again, just like MP3, you can adjust the amount of compressions, and
you can squeeze it so hard, you now limit the amount of bandwidth
required that you start getting artifacts, and MP3 sounds bad, with
some cable systems you actually can see visual artifacts as a result
of all the compression.

Robin Miller: I
actually can if I’m watching – I live in Tampa Bay Bucs
territory, but if I’m watching a better football team that
moves faster than Bucs.

Alfred Poor: So
delivery of the content is a problem and also storage, I mean we’ve
got Blu-ray which can do 1080p, but there’s no 4K Blu-ray
definition systems available at this point. They’re in
development, but we don’t have them yet. So to buy 4K in order
to get the higher resolution and the better looking image while it’s
going to be tough to find the source material, it’s going to
show you the better image.

Now a lot of people talk
about how good the up-scaling is on some of these sets, and that’s
certainly true, but Robin when I can give you $2 and you can up-scale
it and give me back $8, then I believe in up-scaling.

Robin Miller: And
here is the thing though too and another thing, I’m old, I
really am, I’m ancient, I get social security, but still, I’m
not that old, I have a TV, I have a small living room, it’s not
huge, I watch a 42 inch TV from about eight feet away, and I will
tell you very bluntly that I cannot personally tell the difference
between really high quality, well-shot 480 and 720, I can’t
tell.

Alfred Poor: Right,
at that distance you shouldn’t be able to, the minimum screen
for a high definition – minimum size screen for high definition
at about eight feet is it really needs to be 47 or 50 inches before
anyone with good eyesight is going to be able to tell the difference.
So if you’re not going to get a big enough screen, you’re
not going to be able to tell the difference. So if you’re
sitting more than five feet away, I mean eight feet away I’d
say, and you want to get a 50 inch screen, well just physically you
are probably not going to be able to tell the difference between a 4K
screen and 1080p HD screen.

Robin Miller: And
because of my room layout and the way it’s designed, there is
no real room for – before I bought it, I measured it and I
said, the maximum I can put here comfortably and look good is a 42
inch. So, you know what the real big difference I see or have with
Blu-ray when I get a Blu-ray piece or good high def, sound.

Alfred Poor: Well,
there is that, yeah

Robin Miller: I
have a – now I don’t have a $1 billion sound set, I have
a Logitech front and rear speaker and center, and sub woofer piece
that I bought refurbed from Newegg for $40.

Alfred Poor: Wow.

Robin Miller: Yeah,
and I have friends come over and say, wow, your home theater thing is
wonderful, and the answer is, it’s real 7.1 because I hooked
all the wires up and most people don’t.

Alfred Poor: Right,
most people don’t. Now the other thing here is the problem with
the 4K is again, the majority of people out there are watching DVDs
on their HD televisions and think they look great.

Robin Miller: They
do.

Alfred Poor: We
forget that DVD is old fashion 480p standard definition, it looks so
great because it’s digital and eliminates all that analog noise
that we get with the VHS tapes, but the fact is that the average
consumer is not screaming for more resolution. They’re very
happy with the low-res DVDs that they’ve got.

Robin Miller: I’m
right there with them, I mean, I’ve gone up, I have a Blu-ray
player and I’ve gone up to the redbox thing and I’ve paid
the extra for the Blu-ray and a couple of times I’ve gotten the
same movie, Blu-ray and DVD, and I brought them and like I said I
can’t tell the difference.

Alfred Poor: Yeah,
well that – again, with your screen size and the viewing
distance, it’s unlikely that you would be able to tell the
difference. Now there are somethings about the new TVs that are
available now, that weren’t around five years ago that might
give you a reason to buy a new one. And one of that is the whole
smart TV, Internet connected TV kind of thing.

Robin Miller: You
mean like that little Google, little tiny device I have stuck on the
back that cost me $40.

Alfred Poor: Right,
so a lot of people are adding those functionalities to their existing
television with the Chromecast or buying one of the local boxes or
Western Digital has got them and lot of people offer these boxes that
will add the Internet connectivity, but it gives you access to
Netflix and Hulu Plus and Youtube and a whole bunch of kind of online
sources that a lot of people want to watch. I know in our house we
watch a lot of Netflix and Hulu Plus streamed right to our
television.

Robin Miller: Yes,
a long time ago a friend of mine in Boston said you don’t have
a Wii, you need a Wii and he gave us one as a gift because he had
gotten a bunch of those, and so he gave us a Wii, and that gave us
Netflix.

Alfred Poor: Yeah,
the Wii will do that, the Xbox also is a platform for streaming. It’s
funny, some studies have shown that people spend as much time or more
watching Netflix and other online streaming content on their Xboxes
than they do playing video games.

Robin Miller: We
do on our Wii.

Alfred Poor: Which
is – well, the Wii is more of a family kind of device in the
first place, but it’s

Robin Miller: Well,
we’re a family people

Alfred Poor: Right,
I know, but I’m thinking a lot of people think of the Xbox as
being more of a hardcore gaming platform and yet people are using it
to watch a lot of video content as well. So yeah, we do have the
option of adding a low cost box to your existing television and
getting a lot of that functionality at the same time.

Robin Miller: Well,
the Chromecast thing, I’ll tell you and I’m going to do a
review shortly for Slashdot of it, and here is a teaser for you
folks. It’s nice but it hasn’t changed my life. It hasn’t
done much that I couldn’t already do with the Blu-ray, the $85
on sale, whether we buy at Target or something because I don’t
even remember Blu-ray little box.

Alfred Poor: Yeah,
a lot of Blu-ray players also include the Internet connectivity, so
that’s another way you can get it. But again, if you don’t
have it through one of those channels, getting a new television is
one way to get it. Another reason for getting a new television may
well be, especially if you bought one five years ago, is you’ve
probably bought one that was too small. And so now today the 47 inch
models are from good brands are under $500. I saw a 60-inch set for
$800 advertised today. So the really big ones have come down so far
in price that if you bought one that’s too small for the
viewing distance that you have, you might think about migrating the
smaller ones to some place where the viewing distance would be more
appropriate or doesn’t matter so much like a guest room and
getting yourself a proper sized one for your viewing space.

If only they made a tape...opaque... [homedepot.com]that could be used to cover up the cameras - then we'd only have to worry about the microphone - which might befall an accidental exposure to superglue. Microphones don't work when the little inner bits don't vibrate anymore.:D

I've got a light-amplifying scope that my father-in-law gave me. One evening (not particularly dark out) I wondered why the image seemed dimmer than usual -- and then I realized I'd left the lens cap on. Yes, it could see through the lens cap. Some nominally black plastic is fairly transparent to near-red IR. Most digital or video cameras can see IR (test it by looking at an IR remote signal).

An example of color digital infrared photography. The camera's infrared blocking filter has been removed.

You can see the "normal" visible light colors in the parts of the scene that aren't highly IR reflective like the sky and some of the stone. From the same Wikipedia page, here [wikipedia.org] is a picture from a camera that is setup as you describe. Note the complete absence of blue in the sky.

This scene I originally linked looks very similar to "night vision" security cameras that use IR illuminators and have no IR cut filter for daytime. Highly NIR reflective objects look white, but oth

It's totally irrelevant if you don't hook your TV up to the internet in the first place.

Besides, any self-respecting slashdotter has their own HTPC hooked up to their essentially HD Monitor (TV) and has it whitelisted for certain outbound services only and no direct inbounds (upon request only). Solves a whole host of issues. Oh, and the HTPC doesn't have a camera nor mike attached, so until the TV can be hacked over HDMI in that scenario, It appears to be relatively safe for now.

If only they made a tape...opaque... [homedepot.com]that could be used to cover up the cameras - then we'd only have to worry about the microphone - which might befall an accidental exposure to superglue. Microphones don't work when the little inner bits don't vibrate anymore.:D

Yea, I dunno about you, but I don't like to pay a several-hundred-dollar premium for hardware I'm going to intentionally break as soon as I open the box. That just seems stupid.

Well, yeah - choose it without, but if you can get a wonderful deal on something that just happens to have a camera and microphone in it you will -never- use - why let a thing like a camera or microphone be a deal killer when there are such easy fixes for them.

Well, yeah - choose it without, but if you can get a wonderful deal on something that just happens to have a camera and microphone in it you will -never- use - why let a thing like a camera or microphone be a deal killer when there are such easy fixes for them.

I see where you're coming from, but chances are if you can get a "wonderful deal" on a 'smart' tv with all that spy gear built in, you can also get a dumb display of competing size and resolution for much, much less.

Hell, I don't even need speakers in mine, just some sort of audio-out so I can hook the display to my surround sound system.

Or you could not buy a product with extra features you don't want. My big screen does not spy on me, it simply does not have an input capability (well, technically it has IR remote and power on/off button).

Sure my formerly present HD was just fine, but unlike the TV I've had since I was in 3rd grade (some 30 odd years ago), my HDTV simply stopped working 3 years after I bought it. $900 to fix apparently, or get a new one for $700.

My new 42" LED backlit screen consumes about 1/3rd the power (50-60W vs 140-150) of my first generation 1080p LCD, it also looks better. I probably wouldn't have upgraded if it hadn't been for a ghosting artifact caused by my HTPC menu getting burned in on the old one but now I couldn't imagine going back.

My new 42" LED backlit screen consumes about 1/3rd the power (50-60W vs 140-150) of my first generation 1080p LCD, it also looks better. I probably wouldn't have upgraded if it hadn't been for a ghosting artifact caused by my HTPC menu getting burned in on the old one but now I couldn't imagine going back.

With a delta of less than 100w it will take you a lot of TV watching to come close to a break even on cost from the efficiency gain (say, 30 _thousand_ hours if you spent $350 on your tv). Efficiency is a good thing, but it is important to know the context.

My new 42" LED backlit screen consumes about 1/3rd the power (50-60W vs 140-150) of my first generation 1080p LCD, it also looks better. I probably wouldn't have upgraded if it hadn't been for a ghosting artifact caused by my HTPC menu getting burned in on the old one but now I couldn't imagine going back.

With a delta of less than 100w it will take you a lot of TV watching to come close to a break even on cost from the efficiency gain (say, 30 _thousand_ hours if you spent $350 on your tv). Efficiency is a good thing, but it is important to know the context.

Americans average 34hrs/week watching TV, so it would take 16 years (less, assuming electricity costs decrease).

British people watch less, 28hrs/week, but electricity costs more (average £0.145/kWh), so a TV costing £250 and saving 100W would take almost 12 years to pay for the saving.

My plasma TV's consuming ~350W now, with a dark sci-fi film (brighter scenes use more power for a plasma TV). The saving here would be greater: about 5 years to pay for, less since we don't just watch dark films.

It doesn't make a financial sense, but having a new TV that is low power, especially one that runs off of 12 volts is a good thing to do when RV-ing, where when boondocking, one needs to save on every watt that comes from the battery bank.

A 60 watt TV's energy use can be mostly compensated for by a decent 200-300 watt solar panel and a good charge controller. A TV that uses three times that will be pushing things unless one also charges with generator power.

Because we're in a recession and need to stimulate pointless consumer spending, that's why! Now, are you in favor of spending all your money on stuff that will not appreciably improve your life, or are you a Communist?

Why the fuck he's talking about "image quality"? Until we get 4k displays the quality differences are non-existent.

There have been big advances in LCD technology. 7 years ago I would not even have considered LCD, but today I'm hard pressed to justify the heat and power draw of plasmas since the LCDs have improved so much.

Why the fuck he's talking about "image quality"? Until we get 4k displays the quality differences are non-existent.

Resolution is far from the only thing that matters for image quality. Contrast, black levels, ghosting, viewing angle, color reproduction, and even input lag (for lip sync) can make a big difference. For an extreme example, compare LCD vs. plasma at the same resolution.

That's my problem as well. I have a fairly crappy 5-year-old 30" HDTV. I know it's crappy but that's OK, because I only use it to play an occasional casual game or watch a movie every couple of weeks. I checked newer TVs and they are all crappy, contrast ratio is mediocre, color performance is abysmal and manufacturers compete only on "see how we can make your TV to be a big-ass 60" panel!"

So I decided not to bother and wait for 4k panels. I don't care much about content, because I'll be using it mostly f

not as good as my father in law's LG LED TV, but its mostly because his has a better CPU to decode the image

i have a 3d blu ray player and an apple TV connected to mine for all the smart TV crap. 3d blu ray players can be had for $99 at best buy with vudu, amazon, cinemanow, porn, pandora, tunein and lots of other services

We had an old HD TV (4-5 years), that I could have taken to my apartment. It was bulky, and had green and purple bars that would roll across the screen (picture wasn't bad though and the bars were light). The problem was it was so heavy that we needed a dolly to move it. When I moved in, I went and bought a new, bigger HD TV that was light enough I could carry it by myself. If you are moving or have limited space, then a newer TV makes sense with the lighter weight and the smaller form factor of the tv a

Got myself a 50" 1080p DLP TV in 2005. I've replaced the bulb twice so far, and told my wife that the next time it needs replacing we'll give it to anyone that's willing to take it. (It runs a little warm and the fan makes it less than quiet for about a half hour after I turn it off. Also the newer TVs are likely much more energy efficient.)

The TV has good picture quality, but the HDMI ports don't work particularly well. Truthfully, I didn't try an HDMI source until about 2-3 years ago. It works fine wi

720p is still 1280×720 and 1080i(p) is still 920×1080. While older sets are most likely limited to 720p, in the most widely sold 42"-46" tv's, the difference between the 2 is hardly noticeable. If you want internet connectivity a cheap roku functions better than the hideous, never-updated software on most tv's. Finally that leaves us with gimmicks such as 3D which even the industry is moving away from.

Five years ago I invested in a Samsung television. It's been great and I don't want to replace it. It has the features (120hz) and size (52") I want plus looks nice on the wall. I made sure to get LCD versus plasma to help keep electricity costs down. I held off on buying a DLP because I knew I would grow tired of the volume it would take up in the living room. Research showed that the LCD panel was from a Samsung/Sony plant in South Korea with units having a 3% failure rate versus 5% for its competition. Who looks for an excuse to replace their main television frequently? Not me. If you bought something with the intention of replacing or demoting it after a few years of ownership, by all means spend your money.

If you don't have ghosting and don't have light bleeding from the edges then there's really nothing on offer that would provide a compelling case for an upgrade. The "smart" part is normally solved by your much less expensive to upgrade Blu-ray player, 3D is pointless, and who the hell wants a hackable camera for NSA/GCHQ types to enjoy?

His information is a bit out of date. He said 4K Blu-Ray was still in development. However, you can already buy 4K Blu-Ray players. You can also buy a very limited selection of 4K Blu-Ray discs like Ghost Busters. That being said, the prices for all the equipment required is still going to be overpriced for at least a couple more years and there still won't be a whole lot of content available for a couple more years. So wait a couple years before buying into 4K.

Those are not real 4k Blu-ray players - they only upscale standard Blu-ray discs to 4k. When the 4k standard will be ratified, even if it will still use Blu-ray discs, those discs won't play in these players because the standard will almost certainly use new codecs.

Also those 4k discs you can buy are really only standard 1080p discs. They are "4k mastered", meaning they are encoded from a 4k source, but downscaled to 1080p, and are usually using a much higher bitrate than ordinary Blu-ray discs in order to preserve as much of the quality of the picture as possible, since they most likely will be used in those upscaling players. Upscaling magnifies encoding artefacts.

Those 4k mastered discs also play in normal Blu-ray players, since they are really only 1080p. At the moment they are probably the highest quality video source available for consumer purchase.

Why would I buy seven year old technology when in a couple of years, perhaps even less, I can afford a 4K Ultra High Definition TV technology with 3840 x 2160 pixels (8 megapixels) -- four times that of 1080p televisions, which only offers 2 megapixels of resolution.
TCL has already announced it will sell a 4K resolution, 50-in. Ultra High Definition (UHD) TV starting this fall for $999. And Samsung and Sony just announced they're slashing their prices. For 65-inch 4K TVs, Samsung's asking price recently f

My first flat panel is actually a monitor. No tuner. It made sense because, by 2007, it wasn't like anyone tuned TV directly on their displays. They hooked up to a cable/satellite box or HD Tivo. I've never missed having a tuner on that panel.

Unfortunately, after years of double-duty as a computer monitor and TV, it started to suffer from image persistence. I moved it to video-only duty and it mostly cleared up but now it has a slight, curved shadow around the top edge like the outline of a curved CRT.

This is plainly news for the people who don't care to learn about display technologies, which granted, is clearly the majority. Watching this interview through that lens the content makes sense. But news for nerds, oh hell no!. It is fucking laughable how bad it is.

9 years ago, we shelled out 4-figures for a 43" Pioneer Plasma. Today, I swing through a Best Buy and HH Gregg once every month or so, and glance at the TV's, and simply put, the LCD's on the market that can match it's picture. (I couldn't care less about 3D). It's the perfect size for our den (sure, it could take a 48", or even a 52", but the 43" doesn't leave me wanting for any more picture).

Long answer. Most of my TV channels, even the HD channels, still show well over 50% of only SD quality shows. There is no compelling reason to update perfectly good hardware if it will be years before the content will take advantage of it. It may be a chicken and egg thing, but at this point it looks to me that the smart thing to do would be to wait a hardware generation or two before spending any more money on TVs.

Who still consumes the majority of content on televisions? At least the demographic that advertisers care about. And most people aren't upgrading their computers/notebooks let alone even thinking about upgrading their televisions.

Just because it is old, maybe 3 years, and newer ones are better doesn't mean it needs to be replaced.I don't just get an "ohh shiny" new tv because it is newer.When it breaks in maybe 5 years from now I might replace it.

It seems that at least with HDMI, most TV manufacturers have finally figured out what 1:1 mode is (though it's not enabled by default, which is still stupid). However, most HDTVs I've seen still have at least 40ms input lag, which is pathetic. (For comparison, I've used a Dell 1701FP LCD from 2001 that had virtually no input lag, on VGA.)

I think the main attraction to newer sets is embedded support for common services such as netflix. It is an aesthetic choice that eliminates another box on your TV stand. (or the TV stand altogether if you're using a wall mount.)

Power consumption and viewing angles have all improved with the advent of better LCD technology, eliminating the need for power guzzling plasma displays, which turned out to be more of a stop gap than anything.

I kind of planned it that way. I just getting tired consuming so much crap cause I need another big fucking TV screen to see movies and shit for fuck sake. I love sounds and movies but I fucking hate advertisments inmyfuckingfaceallthefuckingtime telling me I need a new FUCKING SCREEN!!

Sure, it's only 720p, but a $90-ish Roku will add most of the features an $800+ Smart set would have (except for the 1080p), and I'm still getting better black and contrast than the new thin LCD/LED sets.

I would really like to replace my Westinghouse 37W1, since the backlight is separating, but there's nothing I can find like it. It does not have a tuner, since I have no use for one, but it has a more-then-complete set of discrete inputs (2 HDMI, 2 component, S-Video, Composite, and SVGA), so my receiver can switch between my sources and the monitor just handles the output. It's like speakers (converts electricity into sound), but for images.

I hate my HDTV. It is a Vizio and was purchased about three years ago. It's like a throwback to the 60's when I was a kid. Back then you turned on your TV, and then you had to wait awhile for it to warm up before you could see a picture. Changing channels required getting up from the chair and walking across the living room. Which, beyond being a pain in the ass, was time-consuming. Now I can have the same 1960s convenience with my HDTV. When you turn it on it takes at least 20 seconds to do -- what?, I don't know, boot up? Then another few seconds for sound. Except for those times when the sound won't come on for some reason, which means starting the whole process over again. Changing the channel is equally annoying. I have a remote, so I don't have to get up, but it takes just as long. It's probably five seconds between channel changes. And sometimes it skips a couple of channels. Occasionally, it seems to get mixed up about what to do, and just shuts itself off. I really miss my old analog television. HD looks nice, but it's not worth the frustration.

Single-use as in what, viewing pictures on a large medium suitable for multiple persons?

Cable TV might be going downhill, but televisions as a whole aren't going away. Yes, portable devices exist, but just as the walkman co-existed with the home-stereo (and the discman as well), so can the TV with portables.

For movies, broadcast, video games, or even as large computer monitors... televisions may change somewhat but aren't likely to go away any time soon.

To me this sounds like a question asking, "what are you going to do with your Walkman?" TVs, and TV-viewing, are quite obsolete. The device you watch anything on now is irrelevant. When you can watch anything you want, any time you want, anywhere you want, why would anyone spend money on a single-use device like a TV to conform to a very outdated form of media consumption?

Because I want the football players on my television every Thursday night, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night to be near life size when I watch them. And not being so selfish, the rest of my family also wants to be able to see the same thing when they watch the same program.

I have a friend who decided the family didn't need a TV anymore since everyone was watching shows on tablets or laptops in their own rooms. He walked through the house one evening to discover that his wife and two children were independently watching the same show from netflix in 3 different locations in the house having all started at different times... So now the family doesn't even watch TV together and it uses up 3 times the bandwidth.

When you can watch anything you want, any time you want, anywhere you want, why would anyone spend money on a single-use device like a TV to conform to a very outdated form of media consumption?

My family watches movies and plays video games on the big screen. Sure we could have tablets and laptops and headphones and use those instead to watch what we want and play what we want... oh wait we do have those.

And we still use the big screen TV. Maybe we're more sociable than you and like to do things together a

To me this sounds like a question asking, "what are you going to do with your Walkman?" TVs, and TV-viewing, are quite obsolete. The device you watch anything on now is irrelevant. When you can watch anything you want, any time you want, anywhere you want, why would anyone spend money on a single-use device like a TV to conform to a very outdated form of media consumption?

Because I like a 60" screen across the room that 5 (or more) of us can watch comfortably to having each person isolated with headphones, or in a separate room holding a tablet or phone to their face.

Just because I *can* watch a movie on my phone in the bathroom or on the subway doesn't mean that I want to.

A TV is no more "single use" than a computer is since there are a lot of different devices I can hook up to it -- including a computer.

I connect my "TV" to a media PC and stream VLC/netflix content to big screen in my living room. Many people also have consoles connected to their screens. Cable TV might be dying, and I will be first one to dance on its overpriced commercial-filled grave, but big screen living room entertainment is not.

It's a big, honking monitor that displays whatever input it receives. In case you didn't notice, your laptop or desktop PC almost certainly have an HDMI output to match the TV's HDMI input. Even a lot of tablets do. You don't need an antenna or cable or satellite connection, any device which can output HDMI (or depending on the unit, DVI, S-Video, etc.) signal will do. Personally I find it uncomfortable to watch movies on a laptop screen or tablet, especially if I'm not the only one watching.

TV's arn't going anywhere. If I were a single apartment dweller who never entertained, I'd be inclined to agree that I might never need a big TV and would watch everything on my laptop and/or tablet. But I'm not. The family watches TV together. Groups come over to watch games. Not to mention, hooked up to my 7.1 Onkyo system, I have my own little theater that just isn't replicated by my laptop in my lap. TV's have a long, long future ahead of them.

You don't go around a race circuit fastest in a minivan, so if you like racing you should get a vehicle that does it better. It may be shit for all other uses but the quality of the exclusive experience makes it worth the investment.

Even if my girlfriend wanted to fuck me anywhere, any time, the quality of the experience would be enhanced by taking some time off and going to a nice, peaceful, private place where I can concentrate on her, exclusively.

Music can and is enjoyed anywhere, any time. But NOTHING compares to actually disconnecting from the wired world and sitting in a good concert hall, listening to an orchestra do what it does so well.

I could go on with a hundred more example. Just like all of them, TVs have a place. Yes, I can suck down media content anywhere, any time, but sometimes I actually like to FUCKING PAY ATTENTION to the movie on a big screen in a dark room with a superior sound system, sitting in a comfy chair with no interruptions.

What sort of distracted ass would ask "Why have a TV?" Is there nothing you think is worth doing well? Or is a half-assed look all you need?

People who ask this question would be just as happy with a poster of a Picasso thumbtacked to their wall as with the experience of seeing it in person. I feel sorry for them. No matter what generation they're from or what generation they feel entitled to insult, they need to learn to appreciate art...not just consume it willy-nilly, without thought, without quality but happy as a clam because they can accomplish such consumption while simultaneously washing clothes and updating Twitter.

You don't know what you're missing. Please, no matter what your age, grow up and figure it out.

Even if my girlfriend wanted to fuck me anywhere, any time, the quality of the experience would be enhanced by taking some time off and going to a nice, peaceful, private place where I can concentrate on her, exclusively.

You should have stuck with just the car analogy if you wanted/.ers to actually understand your metaphor.

Like others have observed TV's aren't really single use devices. The various roles they fill of course can be done by a variety of other devices in some shape or form. Personally we have a TV so that we can watch things together as a family. Also my eye sight is getting worse as I age and so having a nice big screen makes for less eye fatigue. Watching short videos and such on phone and tablet size screens is bad enough, I can't imagine trying to watch an entire movie that way. We also do not subscrib to ca

We have a fairly large CRT that's at least a dozen years old which works fine for us. If I were to sit with my nose a foot or two from the screen I might consider coughing up for an HDTV, but my eyesight isn't good enough to notice the difference from across the living room. Why bother? It's the same reason that I drive an 11 year-old truck; it's good enough for my needs.

We have an "old" TV, given to us by someone that upgraded. I think it's HD resolution, but it doesn't do HDMI etc.

It's a plasma screen, and the watt-meter I have measures about 300-600W consumption depending on how bright the scene is -- it's usually about 400-500W. If I used it more than once a week I'd be more interested in upgrading it, but I don't.

If I used it as much as the woman next door uses hers, an upgrade to an LCD TV would pay for itself within a year in reduced electricity bills.

My first TV CRT I replaced because it made a high pitch whine that got very painful.Then I got a DLP rear projection. That worked for about 5 years then it started to give me stuck pixels (White and black) A lot of them, in a normal distribution from the left center.So now I am on an LCD. Hopefully LCD will last more then 5 years. I mean it is a TV you shouldn't need to swap them every few years.